Immune Therapies

Mistletoe, a European Immune Approach

Cancer is a scary word and is a difficult disease to deal with on many levels. This article is for informative purposes only and is not meant to offer treatment advice for or against any method. That being said, there is a great deal of information and misinformation out there about cancer therapies. I would like to provide information on one specific natural immune builder that has an 90+ year track record in Switzerland and Germany used with cancer patients. This therapy is mistletoe of the European variety that is injected following a systematic protocol developed by the Weleda company based in Basal, Switzerland.

I was very fortunate to visit the Lukas Klinik cancer hospital in Arlesheim, Switzerland in 2007 and was able to see their approach to cancer patients and to discuss the various aspects of this therapy with the top mistletoe researchers in the world. I had been familiar with mistletoe for a number of years, but it was a whole new experience going to the origin of this therapy. I was provided with numerous studies following treatment with Weleda’s mistletoe brand iscador and I was amazed with the amount of research and documentation that had been done over the past 80 years. Each patient at this hospital received some form of mistletoe along with stringent diets and other therapies, some conventional and some alternative. Their approach included mistletoe as a staple in cancer programs at their hospitals.

The theory behind mistletoe comes from the Anthroposophic Medicine group based off of the work of Rudolph Steiner, the inspiration for the Waldorf schools. Mistletoe over the ages has been an unusual plant because it is a disease on trees and it blooms in December—out of sync with most other plants. This was supposedly the original idea for helping with cancer because cancer cells are out of sync with the other cells in the body. The idea was if this plant is normally out of sync perhaps it can bring abnormal cells back into a normal rhythm of life and thus help a person with cancer rejoin the rhythm of life. As this process was refined over the years and scientifically researched they found that there were compounds that would stimulate the immune system and others that would kill abnormal cells.

I found it interesting to see the original centrifuge for separating the mistletoe extracts in one phase of the process. This old centrifuge was no longer in use and it was about 12 feet in diameter. The facility was now part of the hospital and the manufacturing had moved to a large new facility in Basal with an even bigger centrifuge. There was a courtyard outside of this area where a person could relax in a park like atmosphere with beautiful trees. The interesting thing about these trees is that all of them had some form of mistletoe growing on them. It turns out this was a demonstration garden of the different varieties of mistletoe made into iscador. The entire facility was well thought out and then I learned that each tree had a specific purpose.

The anthroposophic doctors also observed that there was a correlation between different trees and different cancers. They found that the oak tree being such a strong and historically “male” tree was a better type of mistletoe for male cancers. Apple trees were more feminine and better for female specific cancers. Other trees are also specific for other cancers and there are even more factors that fine tune these therapies.

I hope this article has been of some interest and brings perhaps a new meaning to mistletoe.